Good News: Wal-Mart Slowing Down

We can argue the cause of the Beast slowing but the result is the same.

Fast. Friendly. Clean.

The only way Wal-Mart can accomplish this would be to increase the number of content, motivated employees.

...reformulating 1,200 products.

Reformulating? Does that mean ‘making better’ or ‘making cheaper‘?

“There are a lot of issues here, but what they add up to is the end of the age of Wal-Mart,” contends Richard Hastings, a senior analyst for the retail rating agency Bernard Sands. “The glory days are over.”

A year or so ago I read a post from someone called “Czar.”
I remember much of what was written. The the main thrust of the post was that “if you run your business on price alone that is not a LONG-TERM SUSTAINABLE plan for any business.”
This party mentioned at the time that they worked for a business that had been around about 75 years--if I remember the number of years correctly. The company owner (according to Czar who used to work there) kept drilling into employees on a regular basis that THEY WOULD NEVER COMPETE ON PRICE. Instead they would focus on customer service, a quality product, etc. That’s why they had been around for so long. But if they had chosen to compete on price alone they would have been gone years ago.
According to Czar Wal-Mart’s choosing to compete on price alone was a HUGE MISTAKE. After reading his post and thinking about it for a while I realized how right he was. It is easy to compete on price alone. Just keep buying cheap stuff. And from the size of most Wal-Mart’s there’s a lot of cheap stuff to be had.
But Wal-Mart can’t hold a candle to most businesses that give you better quality goods, and customer service. And there is always someone who doesn’t want cheap stuff.
Are Wal-Mart’s glory days over? It is beginning to look like it.

First things first… I do not have a lot of confidence in any news source that is unable to accurately report the most basic facts. The meeting was not held in New York, as stated by this article. It was held in Rogers, Arkansas, just down he road from the corporate offices.
If you take a close look at the numbers, especiall when compared to the other “big box” retailers, Wal-Mart is standing tall over their competitors. Wal-Mart stock (WMT) closed at $55.17 today, compared to Target’s #38.51. I think that speaks volumes for the company’s performance and future earnings potential, especially in the current market.
I don’t see a down-side to this, folks.

Jane,

“This party mentioned at the time that they worked for a business that had been around about 75 years--if I remember the number of years correctly. The company owner (according to Czar who used to work there) kept drilling into employees on a regular basis that THEY WOULD NEVER COMPETE ON PRICE. Instead they would focus on customer service, a quality product, etc. That’s why they had been around for so long. But if they had chosen to compete on price alone they would have been gone years ago.”

If I’m not mistaken, CZAR had worked for Dun & Bradstreet (the leading provider of business information for credit, marketing, and purchasing decisions worldwide.), which is FAR different from a retail business!! 

The whole reason that Wal-Mart has been in business for over 40 years and has risen to #1 in the retail industry, has been PRICE!!  To change that model, would be to become like every other retail business and they would surely drop from the #1 spot!!

I always wondered, how CZAR went from being a business analyst at Dun & Bradstreet, to working stocking shelves at Wal-Mart!!  And, I question his business sense, based on that move!!  Going from a ‘high wage’ salary to a ‘low wage’ job, just doesn’t sound like ‘good’ reasoning to me!!

...especially in the current market.

You’re absolutely right, Brandon, there’s nothing better for a bottom-feeder like Wal-Mart than to have the overall economy in the toilet.

I don’t see a down-side to this, folks.

That would make you a part of the problem then, Brandon.

Live Better In Cheap Underwear

Part of the problem? Here IS THE PROBLEM!

Obama Lacks a Moral Compass
Monday, October 20, 2008
By: Ronald Kessler

With the election two weeks away, one thing has become clear: Barack Obama is not only the most liberal presidential candidate in recent memory, he lacks a moral compass.

How else does one explain his sitting in the pews of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church as Wright spews forth hateful fabrications about America, whites, and Israel? How else explain his being “friendly” with admitted domestic terrorist William Ayers, who told the New York Times he does not rule out engaging in bombings again?

In a chilling video on YouTube, Larry Grathwohl, a former member of the Weather Underground which Ayers helped found, says the organization planned to take over the U.S. government and give parts of the country to Russia, Cuba, North Vietnam, and China. The plans included “re-educating” Americans as Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries.

In the video, Grathwohl says he asked 25 leaders of the Weather Underground who were discussing the plans, “Well, what is going to happen to those people that we can’t re-educate, that are die-hard capitalists?”

The reply, says Grathwohl, was that they would “have to be eliminated.” When he pursued the question further, they estimated that “they’d have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill 25 million people.”

As repugnant as Obama’s relationship with Ayers is, the fact that for two decades Obama attended a church where paranoid hatred of America was preached on a regular basis is more telling. The senator counted as his minister, friend, and advisor a man who says that America created the AIDS virus to kill blacks, puts blacks in prison rather than killing them off, and deserved to be attacked on 9/11 because of its racism.

When the press finally picked up on stories Newsmax was running on Reverend Wright, Obama said he would not have belonged to the church if he had regularly heard Wright’s hate-filled statements. Yet when he announced for the presidency, Obama disinvited Wright from giving an invocation because his sermons can get “kind of rough.” Why did Obama not resign from the church then?

Last December, Wright gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement. Why did Obama not resign then? Instead, after Newsmax broke the story on Jan. 14, Obama dissembled about the issue, saying the award was for Farrakhan’s work with ex-offenders. Neither the presentation nor the article about it in the church magazine mentioned anything about ex-offenders.

The truth is that Obama joined the church and adopted Wright as his friend and mentor because he feels an affinity for Wright’s radical views. Why else would he expose his kids to Wright’s “God d— America” tirades? Michelle Obama’s comment that, for the first time in her adult life, she feels proud of America, highlights the fact that she has the same blame-America-first mentality Wright promotes.

As with his minister, Obama repudiated Ayers only when press disclosures became too embarrassing.

As Max Noel, a former FBI agent who worked the Weather Underground case, tells me, “They [the Weather Underground] were a violent, violent, anti-government, domestic terrorist organization. Obama has not only associated with those people, he continued associating with racist people like his minister Jeremiah Wright over a period of 20 years. I don’t think that’s by happenstance. It’s just amazing to me. The American people are being led by the nose by people who say this isn’t important.”

In fact, Oliver “Buck” Revell, a former associate deputy director of the FBI who at one time oversaw the applicant and hiring process at the bureau, tells me the FBI would not hire such an individual as an agent.

“One of the principal purposes of the background investigation is to determine who an applicant associated with and the degree of association with any questionable associates,” Revell says. “Obama would certainly not have been hired on my watch.”

Cont.

The Obama campaign has refused to say when Obama became aware of Ayers’ terrorist background. When Obama began going to Columbia University in 1981, both Ayers and his future wife Bernardine Dohrn, an FBI most wanted fugitive, were frequently in the news. Ayers’ violent past was well known in Chicago, where he was quoted regularly and described as a former radical and former fugitive.

Ayers orchestrated an event at his home that launched Obama’s political career. Obama continued to serve on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago with Ayers for more than a year after Ayers expressed regret in the New York Times for not bombing more people.

According to Grathwohl, Ayers and Dohrn “probably had the most authority” within the Weather Underground.

Last April, Obama defended his relationship with Ayers. Obama said in a Democratic debate that he is also friendly with Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), whom he described as favoring the death penalty for those who carry out abortions.

“Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements?” Obama asked. “Because certainly I don’t agree with those, either.”

Radical as Coburn’s position may be, he was proposing legislation to be passed by Congress. That is quite different from Ayers’s admission that he bombed innocent people in violation of criminal law and that he wished he had set off more bombs.

Instead of finding ways to excuse them, Obama should have been denouncing both Wright and Ayers. Instead of voting “present” 130 times in the Illinois Senate, he should have been doing his job and taking a stand.

As Karl Rove has told me, “The public wants a president with convictions and the courage to act on them. They want a leader who is steady and firm, who can withstand strong political headwinds and won’t be blown about by events.”

As crushing as the financial crisis has been, it seems to me unlikely that Americans will send to the White House a man whose views are not only left of center but who doesn’t know right from wrong.

I crashed my moral compass into a rice paddy while killing unarmed civilians and coconuts. I went to prison for my brand of terrorism while Ayers did not. And while I hated the Christian moral thundering of Martin Luther King Jr. about corporate warfare against third world innocents, it was not in the slightest bit disturbing to my conscience to take bribes from Charles Keating.

My moral compass may be made from some cheap imported plastic from China, but attentiveness to what is destroying the American worker is hardly a concern of mine or my dear dear Bush friends who won’t campaign for me no matter how much I ask them not to.

Bush socialism for the wealthy and the sister ‘crushing financial crisis’ is merely my way of acknowledging the fine economic philosophy of billionaires at the trough at the taxpayer suckers expense.

BTW, my bombs were bigger than those of William Ayers and I killed more people and i did not have to reimburse the U.S. Government for failed naval aviation antics. Also, I graduated 894th out of a class of 899 with morality out of a bottle of booze.

..I did not have to reimburse the U.S. Government for failed naval aviation antics.

Yeah, when I read about that I was floored. If you don’t count the plane he got shot down in, McCain went through 4 other planes. If memory serves me, he crashed one into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola. One of his instructors said he never should have been a pilot.

Should McCain get elected I sure hope they never let him take the stick on Air Force One!

What’s good for Wal-Mart is BAD for America!

I hope they put a big “stick” in his hand & let him beat some common sense and Moral Values into the Liberal Democrats in the Senate & Congress, and when he’s done there start on the Lying, Demonic- Liberal News Media!

The Liberal Democrats assault on American values has advanced teenage pregnancies, suicides, illegal drug trafficking, school violence & killing sprees along with the DECAY of society in general!

SENATOR McCOVER-UP: Abramoff & the GOP Foreign Money Machine
Posted by leveymg in General Discussion
Wed Jun 04th 2008,
I. Background: GOP Foreign Influence Peddling

Senator John McCain has proved to be Jack Abramoff’s best friend.

As Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 2005-2007, McCain was instrumental in suppressing evidence of Jack Abramoff’s role in directing illegal foreign payoffs to ranking members of the Republican Party.

McCain also did a big favor for Abramoff’s principal partners in crime, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed , identified in the 2006 Committee report as key players in the Choctaw Indian and Marianas Island scandals. Not one of the principal witnesses in the matter were compelled to publicly testify by McCain’s panel. The Committee also sequestered 99 percent of the documents it received, and these remain locked away, unseen by the public, in Senate files.

But there’s much more to the scandal than the Indian tribes rip-off McCain did disclose. The strand that runs through all the Abramoff-McCain relationship is foreign money – many, many millions – that Jack, Grover and Ralph funneled to GOP leaders from some of the world’s worst bad guys as part of a foreign influence-peddling operation.
McCain’s role was to limit the disclosures and the political damage that still threaten to destroy the GOP’s foreign funding base and the party’ hopes of ever regaining control in Washington.

This is Part III of a series, The Crimes and Coverups of John McCain, “Reformer” . See, Part 2, “McCain’s 30-Years of Service to Saudi Bank Raiders and Junk Bond Kings” , http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu… ;leveymg Journals

After read9ng quite a bit of your stuff, Larry, I’m left with only one question: why are you a hater?

Peace, blood, we’re all in this together.

Row, row, row, your boat
gently down the stream. 
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.

Also, I graduated 894th out of a class of 899 with morality out of a bottle of booze...

And the Junior Senator, himself has already publicly-admitted to overdoing the booze and drugs during his college years in California.

Get over it already, SVD…

Thanks bbrd, I needed someone to defend my history of drunkenness. Next time you’re in Sedona, stop by the ranch where Cindy and I can treat you to our vision of extended Bush economic DUI or some medicine cabinet ‘extras’. 

As a consolation prize for losing the election already, can someone get me one of those electric carts to drive around Sedona like it was a fighter jet.

Johnny (SDV),

I didn’t know Obama’s wife’s name was Cindy, I thought it was Michelle!!

When you talk about ‘drunkeness’, DUI’s and accident’s where someone was killed, I think you are talking about Ted Kennedy!!

Next time you’re in Sedona, stop by the ranch...

But no quail hunting with Cheney, OK?

Wal-Mart is the exemplar of a form of corporate colonialism, which is to say, organizations from one place going into distant places and strip-mining them culturally and economically. ~ James Howard Kunstler

But no quail hunting with Cheney, OK? ........Or with Dickless Cheney,either,OK?

This Lee Scott man looks like Satan the devil.

“This Lee Scott man looks like Satan the devil.”

And, how would you know what ‘Satan the devil’ looks like, have you visited with him lately?  Are you a ‘Follower of Him’, (Satan)?

“Are you a ‘Follower of Him’, (Satan)? “
RDS the Christhater

Not surprising that you are screening applicants at the door to eternal damnation RDS. From your greeter days?

SDV,

I’ll bet you are quite cozy with the ‘man in red’ yourself, and I don’t mean Santa Claus!!  What does it say about “Judging not, lest ye be judged”?

Saint DiegoView - “A pox be on the house of Wal-Mart and holy praises be given to the glorious house of Costco, so sayeth the lord, ME”.